Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain.

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This is all just so pathetic and insidious and tiresome and almost boringly-predictable that I really just want to say “Yeah well that’s nice, I don’t give a fuck” even though there really isn’t much point to logging into WordPress just so I can tell my readership of -12 that I think Cheney’s a dick when they already know that. Oh look the Most Evil Person On The Planet is saying things that aren’t true and playing semantic games and talking about how awesome it was that the Bush Crime Family kept us safe for 8 years other than that whole 9/11 thing and the dead soldiers and, yknow, Katrina and the economy and health care costs and whatever else. (Sorry but personally I’m not buying the whole “we only get to count terrorist attacks that didn’t happen after 9/11, the phony wars and the domestic disasters don’t count” thing. It’s a total package) and how Democrat X “doesn’t get it” and the idea of accountability for anything ever is communist and pussilanimous and evidence that people who aren’t Republicans bloodthirsty win-at-all-costs 1% doctrine neocons are limp-wristed faggots* and the President is probably planning a nuclear strike on the USA as we speak and only Cheney can stop it and … my god, didn’t this guy have an approval rating of like 3% a few month ago why am I supposed to care what he thinks?

As other (ie: actual) bloggers have pointed out, there really isn’t anything a Republican can do or say that will ever get them barred from the Sunday talk shows and all that crap. Yeah I know I’m linking to Fox here and that doesn’t really count but look at Stephanopolous or whoever else. The point stands.

*nasty word used for effect. Cuz cheney’s a dick and all that. Oh come on you know what I mean..

A reader sent over a picture of a group of protesters camped outside Rep. Susan Davis’s (D-Calif.) “Neighborhood Day” event this past week, brandishing signs calling the president a Black Supremacist and suggesting he’s a Nazi disciple.

do i even need to point out that those two things are mutually exclusive???!?!?

The national Republican Party has mailed a fundraising appeal suggesting Democrats might use an overhaul of the health care system to deny medical treatment to Republicans.

A questionnaire accompanying the appeal says the government could check voting registration records, “prompting fears that GOP voters might be discriminated against for medical treatment in a Democrat-imposed health care rationing system.”

It asks, “Does this possibility concern you?”

Katie Wright, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, said the question was “inartfully worded.”

which is already ludicrous. but then it gets better:

“The RNC doesn’t try to scare people,” said Wright. “We’re just trying to get the facts out on health care. And that’s what we do every day.”

uh huh. sure.

kudos to the AP writer here (uncredited) who obliquely calls the republicans on their bullshit:

The allegation is the latest instance in which some critics of the health care effort have made inflammatory unfounded claims — such as conservatives who claimed the legislation would create “death panels” that they said could lead to euthanizing elderly people.

although it would be much better had s/he written “have lied” rather than “have made inflammatory unfounded claims.” call a spade a spade, dude.

[the] Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement, working with the Imperial County Narcotic Task Force, Imperial County District Attorney Otero, and Imperial County Sheriff Raymond Loera … seized 550 pounds of cocaine and marijuana and indicted 16 people – “dealing a body blow to Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel”

i know that i’m supposed to think, well that’s good, mexican drug cartels are bad (and in a perfect world, pot would be legal and regulated and we’d all get it from our friendly corner bodega).

but instead, i just think, “drugs on the table,” while shaking my head and wondering if these 16 people aren’t just flunkies and the marlos and the stringers of sinaloa are still out there, business only mildly interrupted.

sorry to be so one-note today (although at least it’s not about health care, so you know, nice break from that), but i was reading ted kennedy’s speech to the 1980 DNC and was struck by how so much of it is directly applicable today:

His special relationship with Indian country and longevity of service to Indian country makes him one of our own icons. Forty years ago he completed the work of his slain brother Bobby by chairing the Special Senate Sub Committee on Indian Education, and delivering the famous Kennedy Report to Congress: “Indian Education a National Tragedy, a National Challenge.” This report launched the National Indian Education Association and the modern movement for Tribal control of Indian education.

Tens of thousands of Indian children including my own daughters are showing off their new clothes, their new shoes, and backpacks. They will sharpen pencils, and organize their school supplies; they will decorate their lockers and reunite their circles of friendship. Some will walk through doors of new or renovated schools; get to these schools in new buses, on newly paved roads. All of these hard fought victories were advanced by the Lion of the Senate, from the Indian Education Act to the Tribal College Act, and most recently the reauthorization of Head Start.

His steady hand of leadership watched over Indian education and guided us from the wilderness of disenfranchisement, and being powerless to a position of strength in advocating our needs. … Regardless of who controls Congress or the White House we in Indian country are standing on an isolated island that is a little lonelier now, one less friend, one less champion in a place where we had few.

Let us use his words to give us strength “The work goes on, the work endures, the dream shall never die.”

to be perfectly frank, i’ve never thought much about ted kennedy. oh sure, i know he was a kennedy, and a drunk, and that a woman died while he was driving drunk. but i knew something about his legislative record (which, according to the interwebs, was pretty good). but in reading gawker’s “assessment” of kennedy, i started to think that kennedy might, in fact, be a perfect example of how the right and the left want different things from their elected representatives.

Edward Kennedy, the last surviving son of Joseph and Rose Kennedy, was the third-longest serving US Senator of all time. He was a drunken degenerate. And he might’ve been the best argument for the US Senate ever elected.

…

The ’70s? … he divorced his wife, hit the bottle hard, and began fucking around again even more recklessly than before. But he was the very definition of a functional alcoholic, able to achieve bipartisan compromises on important health care legislation by day and then fuck a lobbyist on the floor of a restaurant by night. He destroyed Robert Bork’s chance at being on the Supreme Court, and paparazzi snapped him fucking a girl on his boat.

…

His most important legacy is the legislation he was instrumental in passing. In the end, Ted Kennedy ended up a much more influential figure in American history than his more ambitious, more driven, probably smarter brothers. … Sadly, he didn’t live to see his longtime dream of national health insurance actually come to fruition. The man’s many, well-documented flaws aside, he was on the right side of history, most of the time, and he did more to actually make America a better place than 90% of the careerists and charlatans who pass through the United States Senate.

And as the undemocratic institution of the Senate (and this celebration of the life of a man who won his seat due to family connections and held on to it for almost fifty years proves the anti-democratic nature of that body) continues to destroy whatever hope this nation has of governing itself responsibly, we’ll miss a man who more often than most tried to show that politics can be about tangibly helping real people.

here’s a man who was, by all accounts–even from his supporters–a tremendous fuck up, a drunk, a womanizer. and yet…he still fucking accomplished things. he pushed for universal health care for 40 years. kennedy was a man who had status, wealth, and power via his family. in some ways, his past and W’s are very similar. but look how differently their stories ended.

in light of all the recent (and not-so-recent) republican sex scandals, i think this bears examination. i’m sure this has been said before (certainly by me), but part of what liberals find so delightfully schadenfreude-licious about republican sex scandals is how much hypocrisy it exposes. these people make morality a central tenant of their politics, making wild claims against their heathen liberal opponents. but then they, too, turn out to be humans with human failings. i think that, being a liberal, it’s easier to just say “well, whatever; he’s still getting shit done.”

obviously, this argument only goes so far. i don’t know that a politician without kennedy’s connections could have weathered the scandals he did. and, barney frank aside (what is it with MA politicians, anyway?), the appearance of mainstream family values is still critical to political success, even on the left. and the left certainly has its share of hypocritical shit bags who do nothing at all to further the best interests of their constituents. but still, i think kennedy’s longevity in the face of very bad, very public failings says something about what we look for in our politicians.